Washed Out Dreams
by SlOpPyMaKeOuTs
Summary: Several friends and many others are dragged out of boring high-school life to chase all there individual dreams and aspirations on the open roads of the Kanto Region.
1. Chapter 1

Rosaline sat around a table with three very large, very burly men. Each held a handful of thirteen cards, and each wore a different very face, which was determined by what sort of cards they had and was viewed in the dim light of the third man's attic.

Rosaline watched them and their faces. She thought about the types of men they were: the first was a simpleton, playing for fun. He always looked jolly, of course, but his smile seemed forced now. She assumed this could only mean he had a bad hand or he was tired. It was quite possible it was a mix. It was his turn. He set down a five of spades.

She turned her attention to the next man. He looked like this move had pained him, but not much. The second man had all the wealth - which would undoubtedly become hers by the end of the game - and all the cards to spare. He set down a six with ease.

The third man was greedy and it showed. His eyes shone with hunger and he sat with a hunched, pointy expression. His eyesight was not good. He began to select a card from his hand, then slid it back and set down an eight. The first man made an impressed noise.

Now it was her turn. Hidden behind her dark hair that all the Callico's shared, her eyes traced each man. They waited for her patiently. The corner of her mouth twitched as she set down a king. The men did not look shocked, nor did they look impressed. They should have been, though, because that was the fifth king she'd laid down on the table.

Her cloak snickered with the secret stash in was hiding amongst its curtains. She rolled her shoulders and sank lower into her chair. It creaked beneath her weight.

Surprisingly enough to her, they all folded. They could not pass the king. She mused that all the good cards must have been the downturned ones. She stretched her hand out and the second man snorted, then handed her a small stack of Pokemon dollars.

Just as they were starting their next round, the door on the first floor burst open. The four card players jumped in their seats as the attic door swung open, light bursting in.

Eric Callico's silhouette was immediately recognizable to Rosaline. A tall, lanky form, he stood with one arm glued to the door, the other glued to his side, and his eyes glued on her.

"You. We're leaving. Now." He said. This was directed at Rosaline, of course, but it seemed to confuse the first and third men.

"We just started another round." Rosaline replied calmly. Her voice was a bit unsettling: it sliced through the air like an icicle. "Come join us."

"No, Rosaline, now." Eric plucked a torchic feather from his sweater before he marched forward and seized his little sister by the arm. She tripped out of her chair, her cloak flying. Her whole extra set of cards flew from her pockets and scattered out among the floor like leaves in the fall. Two pokeballs escaped from her pockets as well. They opened the moment they hit the floor.

A murkrow flew up into the air, crying out angrily as it flapped about in front of the mens' faces. An umbreon scurried across the wooden floor and onto the table, taking the wads of cash placed as a bet in its jaws and chased off after it's trainor, who was being dragged out the door. The murkrow, after seeing that the job was done, left without another caw.

After they were outside, the two stalked down the poorly paved road that lead back to the town. Eric did not speak for five minutes. This would have been unsettling to anyone else, but Rosaline was the part-time queen of silence.

Then, Eric said, "You need to stop doing that."

She looked up at him innocently. "Doing what?"

He gestured to the umbreon that was holding a rough estimate of 300 pokedollars in its jaws. "That."

"Oh, come on. It was all in good fun." She said, smirking. "Come on, we can buy something nice with that!"

* * *

><p>"No."<p>

"Yes!"

"No."  
>"Please?"<br>"No."

Raindrops splattered against the entirely black top of the two girls umbrella, the plitteringing of the rain being almost entirely drowned out by both the girls boots splashing against the violently muddy flood plain. The two's shoes wrenched mud from the earth with every step making the heels and toes caked in a protective layer of the stuff.

"You really should. It'd help out with your pro-"

"I don't have any problems physically or mentally so I would appreciate if you didn't say anything more on the matter."

The ginger closed her mouth and assumed her favorite variation of the puffy cheeks. This proved quite ineffective on the umbrella holder, who trudged past, leaving the ginger to be buffeted by the light rain that was drizzling from the sky. The real storm would start up later that night, and the girls were headed back from high school swimming club.

"Edea get back here!" The ginger girl tried to lift her foot up for a heavy sprint, but just managed to fling mud at the back of Edea's coat.

Edea turned her head in a very sober annoyance, and continued walking away. The ginger girl screamed as her boots got stuck in some hidden trap in the grass, pulling the girl to the ground, her pink socks now fully exposed and turned instantly brown.

Before she even had the chance to let a tear of frustration out, she felt a shadow slid over her vision, a umbrella being stretched as far as it could go over her body.

Edea was crouched down, her shiny black hair slowly getting matted down in the rain. She wore an expression that looked akin to boredom, but the tiniest of smirks pulled the corner of her rather thin lips.

"Kimi, thats the third pair of socks you've ruined this month."

"Two and a half." The ginger automatically replied, wiping the mud out from her face in a hurry. The mud bath wasn't too bad, and little freckles splashed across her nose already surfaced with one quick wipe. "You're going to buy me a new pair right?"

In response, Edea pulled away the umbrella from the prone form of her friend and started walking away wordlessly.

"WAIT!" Kimi tried standing up, her hands slipping in the mud and causing her to plunge even deeper. She thought she heard the slightest puff of amusement, and then the shade of the umbrella slid over her once again.

* * *

><p>Jewel dreamed she was sitting on a justice scale. She sat in the very middle of the scale. In each cup of the scale there was a pokemon: they were the two pokemon she would decide on to complete her team. She hadn't been challenged in a while, but she knew she would have to choose between the two.<p>

On one side of the scale sat her beloved Elgyem, and on the other her best Espurr. They both stared at her with that empty stare that most of her pokemon held. On one hand, her Elgyem was an excellent fighter, but her Espurr had good stats and was very talented in the art of creeping the audience - and usually her opponent - out.

Not that she needed that kind of help. She knew this. She was a confident fighter, with her vivid pink hair and her flowing dresses that looked like those of a goddess. The scale tipped just a tiny bit, sending her tumbling off the middle and onto the ground and sending her back to reality. She woke in her silk sheets in a calming manner. She knew, of course, which pokemon she would choose. She glanced at the set of pokeballs beside her bed. They looked so blissful, she thought, in the darkness. Almost like they were sleeping.

She wondered if she would disturb her pokemon if she released them into her room. Slowly, she reached over and took one out of its padded bed. She released her Espurr onto her bed, and it blinked at her with those unsettling violet gaze. She smiled as it curled into a ball and fell asleep at her feet. She did the same with her other pokemon; Elgyem and all the rest. Then, after the room was filled with sleeping pokemon, she dozed back off again.

* * *

><p>"I can't believe you're making me wear this stupid thing." Cain let out as audible groan as the girl who was fitting around with the eyeshadow and mascara she applied heavily around his eyes. Someone else picked up something behind him that made a very leafy rustling sound, like they were manhandling a palm leaf.<p>

He saw the monstrosity that was a mess of fruits, colorful cloth, and two enormous pineapples jutting out like spiky horns, and his heart plummeted.

"No. Please. This is where I draw the line-"  
>"Come on plllleeease? You promised!"<br>He promised to help out with the stage crew, and two hours later he was somehow forced into womens clothing, a bra and fake breast rubber implants pressing against his skin. He didn't know how but he would be one of the background dancers for a scene nobody else wanted to volunteer for. The choreography made him beg to quit multiple times, but the more he protested the more the vicious girls around him blackmailed him with events that he thought nobody knew or at least forgot about. This was the first time he would be asked to actually dance with full makeup and costume, and no one had informed him that he would be playing a woman.

"Cain, just this one time. You'll be instantly popular!"

"Yeah. Super. Everyone will be lining up to talk to the crossdressing belly dancer guy." he said in mock excitement.  
>"Thats the spirit! Now the fruits you'll be practicing with will be fake for the first few practices, but once preformance day nears we'll actually buy real fruit hats!"<p>

Cain was a rather small boy for his age, being smaller than most of the girls crowding around him, and his figure was slightly feminine, but once he saw the makeup he knew in his heart that he never had the heart to be a cross dresser.

"This makeup makes me look more like a Grotesque experiment than feminine." He deadpanned.

"Dont say that jerk! We worked really hard on that you know? Here, we'll wipe it off then try again." The flock of girls started wiping his face, some harder than others, and they attacked his face once more with beauty utensils and clouds of powder and makeup.


	2. Chapter 2

Cain happened to be sprawled out on the floor the first time he met Edea Crowe. He felt her eyes travel from his monstrous fruit hat - still perfectly in place with fake plastic apples, grapes, and pineapples - to the fake breasts he was laying on. They didn't pop or tear which the girls would have probably fined him for, but having this new girl looking wide eyed at his fake cleavage made him insanely self conscious.

He did vaguely know who Edea Crowe was, not because she was insanely popular at the school they went to, no, he knew her from a mutual friend. Kimi, the red headed production crew manager that had tried to save him from the flock of girls that attacked him earlier, but there's only so much you can do when your bestfriend is developing breasts.

Kimi arranged for the two and herself to go to some event she neglected to inform him about, and they all agreed to meet at the end of the practice that day, but no one anticipated how things would turn out.

"Those are some sturdy rubber bags." This was all Edea had to say on the matter. She started walking towards the crew's exit door, not looking back at the crumpled mess that was Cain.

* * *

><p>Rosaline's favorite place was the outdoor marketplace. It was easy to snare deals and pickpocket cash. That being said, it was Eric Callico's <em>least<em> favorite place. It was crowded and he was very tall. He looked like a girafarig among a herd of blitzles, and he always managed to lose Rosaline among the waves of people. He knew that she could handle herself, but he didn't like acknowledging it.

The only clues he had to relocate her was her massive cloak and a murkrow scaring the small children that came near her.

Today, she was standing between two stands. She was examining a young charmander while simultaneously sliding oran berries into the pockets of her cloak. The berry seller either did not see her or did not care, although Eric suspected it was the former of the two options. He waded through the crowd over to his sister and stood by her.

"You could just buy those, you know." He said, though for their own sake he pretended not to notice her theft. She shoved a last handful of berries into her pocket and turned to him.

"I could." She agreed, shoving even more berries into her pockets. Eric sighed and removed a few thousand pokedollars from his pockets. The old man didn't pay much mind to if the money accounted for the berries missing, and instead shooed the two away from his small stand. Rosaline giggled as she fled through the crowd, and Eric ducked his head.

Suddenly, something short and determined hit his midsection. He looked down to find a very sturdy redheaded girl holding an eevee, looking intensely at the berry-selling man. "Sir!" she called out, as if she had not even ran into Eric. She dropped the eevee and ran past him. Eric suddenly felt Rosaline appear at his side and pick up the eevee, holding it between her arms clumsily.

Eric watched the other girl race towards the stand. He opened his mouth to call out to her, to remind her of her eevee which now remained squirming in his sister's arms, but then he stopped as he saw the man point towards the two of them. The girl took a moment to write something down in a notebook she had, and then started towards them. She called out, "Thieves!"

Before he himself realized what was happening, Rosaline had taken hold of his wrist and was dragging him through the crowd. She had the eevee in a bag she didn't come into the marketplace with and was hurrying towards the nearest exit.

* * *

><p>Cain felt the need to cover his breasts. He had on a windbreaker and a t-shirt underneath that hid his frontal body with it's baggy folds, but every time Edea looked at him he felt awkward.<p>

The three were walking through the market area to wherever Kimi wanted to take them, but they got sidetracked at the traveling merchants stalls. Kimi disappeared for several minutes, leaving him alone with a silent Edea, and when she came back she seemed rather deflated. Her eyes were puffy with recently shed tears, and a swift glance from Edea told him to wait it out for a little while.

After several minutes of walking, she excused herself, heading towards the police station near the library.

She tried keeping it cool at first, but broke into a full out sprint halfway through, making Cain instinctively run after her, Edea already ahead of him.

He ran towards the small garden between the two buildings, leaping over the hedges proved faster than walking around the whole thing. There was a pink haired girl reading some sort of runic book with a strange stone-like pokemon with glowing fingers, but Cain didn't pay the too much mind when leaping over the intricate maze of knee high shrubs.

After a couple more minutes of sprinting over things and past people, he reached the police station. He found Kimi sitting inside the waiting room, using her sleeve to dry her face. He sat down next to her, and Edea burst in the door. She looked concerned for a mere second, and then her face returned to it's natural nonchalant state when she saw that Kimi was relatively okay.

"What happened?" Edea was the first to ask.

"Some kids stole my eevee," Kimi replied, her voice small. She tried to straighten herself out for a moment. "and they stole some berries from a local salesman." She sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "The situation demands justice."

"Did you catch up to them?" Cain asked. He immediately felt a hand hit the back of his head. "Ow!"

"That's a stupid question." Edea said emotionlessly. "Of course she didn't catch up. If she had, she would have her eevee beside her right now." Edea then turned back to Kimi. "Did they take your other pokemon, or just your eevee?"

Kimi, with another sniff, removed two other pokeballs from her bag and released her pokemon. A doduo and chatot appeared in the waiting room with them, looking confused as to why they were in a building and not on a battlefield.

"Good." Edea said. "Do you remember what they looked like?"

Kimi nodded, looking a little more hopeful of the situation.

"Fantastic. Then we'll report it and see what happens."

"Kimi," Cain said gently, not wanting to get hit again. "tell the cops what they need to know, than we can help you look for them on the open roads."

He winced expecting a sharp wake to the head, but Edea just kinda ignored the comment, as did Kimi painfully. Kimi was giving the discriptune to the cops, and his statement remained unheard.

When Rosaline took the eevee from the ginger at the market, she wasn't aware of just how much a problem this eevee would create.  
>Her brother Eric seemed to be a particular hardass about this one theft. Because this time it actually was a theft he couldn't pay back. He was used to shoveling out money borrowed from their parents to whomever Rosaline descended upon, but he was whining nonstop about the squirming mess in Rosaline's hands. It was still connected to its owners pokeball, and they would need to see a specialist to get that removed, and the whining coming from Rosaline's brother made it whine even louder.<p>

"You can't do this, Rosaline."  
>"Shut up."<p>

"Rosaline."

"Shut up please."

"You know I won't shut up about it until you do it."

Rosaline wheeled around on the heels of her shoes, moving her face directly in front of her brother, even though he was almost a head and a half taller than her.

"If you don't want to support me right now, then by all means go back to the town and cry to all your self righteous little girls and police officers and get yourself arrested. This eevee right here will be much happier with the rich old man who buys it for their lover or daughter or whatever. All the girl would have done is raise it as a house animal for some lower to middle class home. I'm doing this little guy a favor, and if you dont want to help both me and it, then just go. Go!" Her shouting got progressively louder and louder through her triade, and several bird pokemon ascended to the skies when she screamed the last go.

She wheeled back, grabbed the now trembling eevee who she might have dropped somewhere in the shouting, and marched further on to the woods.

After an indecisive moment, her brother followed whistling a tone shockingly familiar to "Agony!" whilst heading into the woods.

* * *

><p>Every single person in the Kanto region needed a basic degree from highschool to get anywhere in life. There was no days of old anymore, where any kid could just wander around uneducated throughout the nation after the initial confusion of war and the various crime and government syndicates that popped up afterwards.<p>

Though students of any age could take a leave of absence if they had parent and teacher permission. Standard lessons would still need to be completed within the time frame through various methods of books, computers and the such.

They couldn't go on the hunt right away. It was actually a week and three days before all three friends could get all the signatures and course work.  
>Kimi had three panic attacks, and a severe depression throughout that week. Cain and Edea helped all they could, but the ginger girl placed most of the blame on herself.<br>The three eventually found themselves staring at the sign that indicated they were leaving the town limits. The world outside the large perimeter surrounded by several watchmen would be life threatening if something went wrong, but this was something every person needed to do once in their lives.

"Who's taking the first step out." Cain asked staring at the large archway. They each had permits to go in and out of towns at scheduled hours, and the doors wouldn't stay open forever.

"Why are you making this a huge symbolic thing?" Edea asked with a huff of annoyance.

"Its the first step in our journey! We could get famous or something. Discover a new breed of pokemon, unearth fossils millions of years old, or laaaaaaahhhhhh!" He was cut off mid sentence when both girls shoved him forwards, forcing him to take several of the first steps of the journey to the sounds of highfives.


End file.
